International(-ized) tribunals have emerged as one prominent instrument to achieve justice in transitional societies. However, we know little about when international tribunals are being established. This leads to the questions: What determines the choice for tribunals? And moreover: what effects do they have on (post-)conflict societies?
The state of the art is characterized by an abundance of case studies concerning distinct conflict regimes, such as Rwanda. However it suffers from a lack of comparative studies investigating the causes and effects of tribunals.
Our research focuses on the distribution of power among political contenders. We base our analysis on the assumption that the choice for tribunals does not only depend on objective conditions but is caused by the consequences they would have for the party in government: We hypothezise that the stronger the asymmetry of power in favor of the former victims and current rulers in government and the fewer they are associated with human rights violations, the more probable it is that a tribunal is chosen.
For the process of reconciliation, this might mean that the logic of the (re-)construction of law through tribunals becomes overwhelmed by the logic of revenge.
We will test our hypotheses using multiple regression analysis and by testing the explanatory power of the distribution of power in comparative case studies.
